Into Whispers
by Timesprite
Summary: (Domino) Private lives...


**Disclaimer:** Dom's not mine. The holes in canon that make this possible are not mine. Pretty much everything else is. Run with that.  
**Notes:** Completely half-assed, I totally admit. This has been kicking around in my head for years now (in various forms) I just finally got spurred into writing it. Rated G

Into Whispers  
By Timesprite

The bell signaling the end of the day rang loud outside the squat brown brick building, and a few moments later, the first of a torrent of shouting, energetic school children emerged from the twin doors at the front of the building. Domino leaned against one of the posts supporting the metal awning, letting her eyes drift over the sea of faces until one in particular made a bee-line towards her.

"Hey, kid. You dad tell you I was coming?" She tweaked the bill of the worn-out White Sox cap perched on his head.

"Yeah." Brown eyes fixed her with a wary look as he tugged the hat firmly into its rightful position. They were letting him wear it in school now, Victor had informed her. Not that even the usually catty seventh graders would stoop low enough to mock him, but it apparently gave Trevor a sense of normalcy. As if anything in the boy's life had ever been normal.

Dom pushed away from the support beam and slid her sunglasses down her nose to look at the twelve year old. "So, what do you want to do? Get a burger or something?" Trevor shifted his backpack around and she reached a hand out to take it from him. He was tired, she could tell that much just by looking at him, though stubborn pride probably had him determined to keep up with his classmates all day long.

He shrugged. "Sure, I guess."

She nodded slightly, and backpack in hand, started in the direction of the parking lot.

They were half-way through double scoop ice cream cones before she tipped her head to the side and looked at him. They'd hardly said a word since sitting down, and the silence was stretching long. He didn't want to talk about school, or much else for that matter. Just drew spirals on the plate with fries and ketchup until she'd suggested the ice cream. She wasn't surprised his appetite was mostly gone, and it wouldn't hurt to spoil him.

"Look, Trev... do you not want me to come anymore?" The boy turned his attention away from the cone long enough to look her in the eye. "It's okay, you know. I would understand."

It would hurt, but she'd understand. Hell, the thought had been running through her head for most of the last decade. Was this really fair to him at all? She certainly wasn't an essential component in his life. Yeah, she'd nearly bankrupted herself paying out of pocket for all those looming medical bills, paying for every damned trial and treatment they could get him signed onto, but that had been out of duty. Victor and Kathy had done so much, it was only fair. It wasn't as if she were doing anything better with her pay, after all. But Trevor, she was certain, didn't need her. She'd missed too many birthdays, been too much of an intrusion on what would have otherwise been a normal childhood. As normal as a childhood could get, anyway, when there was a tumor nearly the size of a baseball in his skull, eating away at him.

He hadn't inherited her luck. There was a lot he hadn't inherited from her, and she'd been grateful for that. She'd never had to deal with kids who couldn't comprehend quirks of genetics. He would have, and so she'd been glad when he ended up looking almost nothing like her. He probably looked like his dad, but the memory of that fateful one-night stand had long since faded from memory.

"Nah. It's okay."

She rested her head on her hand. "You sure?"

He gave her a short nod and went back to chasing the melting ice cream with his tongue as it tried to run all over his hand, and part of her breathed a sigh of relief. Certainly, it would have been easier to walk away with his blessing instead of forcing herself to watch as he died by fractions of an inch, but she didn't really want that. Instead, she could feel something settle inside her, the way it had four years ago when he'd looked at her with innocent eight-year-old eyes and said _"You're my mom, aren't you?"_

She hadn't been planning on telling him. They'd all agreed, early on, that he should know he was adopted, but she'd never planned to elaborate further. She'd made herself come to terms with being simply a friend of the family. It was the price she had to pay for handing him over at four months of age, resigned to the fact that she couldn't live her life with him in tow. She'd made a mistake, a big one, in thinking he could have somehow filled the hole left in her after she'd abandoned her marriage. The irony hadn't been lost on her--her life seemed doomed to be nothing but a string of derelict dreams. But she couldn't give him up all together--he was hers and she loved him, even if she was a failure as a mother. She had a responsibility to him, but twelve years later, she couldn't tell if she'd done more harm than good.

The son she never admitted she had was dying, and she didn't have a clue what she was supposed to feel.

"Want to catch a movie when we're done here?"

"Sure."

-fin-


End file.
